Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Cup of Gold (1929)
- 2 The Pastures of Heaven (1932)
- 3 To a God Unknown (1933)
- 4 Tortilla Flat (1935)
- 5 In Dubious Battle (1936)
- 6 Of Mice and Men (the novel, 1937)
- 7 The Red Pony (1937)
- 8 Of Mice and Men (the play, 1937)
- 9 The Long Valley (1938)
- 10 The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
- 11 The Forgotten Village (1941)
- 12 Sea of Cortez (1941)
- 13 The Moon Is Down (the novel, 1942)
- 14 The Moon Is Down (the play, 1942)
- 15 Bombs Away (1942)
- 16 Cannery Row (1945)
- 17 The Wayward Bus (1947)
- 18 The Pearl (1947)
- 19 A Russian Journal (1948)
- 20 Burning Bright (the novel, 1950)
- 21 Burning Bright (the play, 1950)
- 22 The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951)
- 23 East of Eden (1952)
- 24 Sweet Thursday (1954)
- 25 The Short Reign of Pippin IV (1957)
- 26 Once There Was a War (1958)
- 27 The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)
- 28 Travels with Charley in Search of America (1962)
- 29 America and Americans (1966)
- 30 Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters (1969)
- 31 The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976)
- 32 Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath 1938–1941 (1989)
- Index
3 - To a God Unknown (1933)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editor's Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Cup of Gold (1929)
- 2 The Pastures of Heaven (1932)
- 3 To a God Unknown (1933)
- 4 Tortilla Flat (1935)
- 5 In Dubious Battle (1936)
- 6 Of Mice and Men (the novel, 1937)
- 7 The Red Pony (1937)
- 8 Of Mice and Men (the play, 1937)
- 9 The Long Valley (1938)
- 10 The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
- 11 The Forgotten Village (1941)
- 12 Sea of Cortez (1941)
- 13 The Moon Is Down (the novel, 1942)
- 14 The Moon Is Down (the play, 1942)
- 15 Bombs Away (1942)
- 16 Cannery Row (1945)
- 17 The Wayward Bus (1947)
- 18 The Pearl (1947)
- 19 A Russian Journal (1948)
- 20 Burning Bright (the novel, 1950)
- 21 Burning Bright (the play, 1950)
- 22 The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951)
- 23 East of Eden (1952)
- 24 Sweet Thursday (1954)
- 25 The Short Reign of Pippin IV (1957)
- 26 Once There Was a War (1958)
- 27 The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)
- 28 Travels with Charley in Search of America (1962)
- 29 America and Americans (1966)
- 30 Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters (1969)
- 31 The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976)
- 32 Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath 1938–1941 (1989)
- Index
Summary
“To a God Unknown.”
Christian Century, 50
(20 September 1933), 1179.
Already a comparison between Steinbeck and D. H. Lawrence has been suggested. To most readers it will be a misleading comparison, but there is a fierce beauty here which gives it point. To a God Unknown is the story of a young farmer's passion for the soil-a love passing the love of woman-and the growing sense of his own identification with it. The novelist has dealt imaginatively with the mystery of man's relation to the earth and the animals, and with those instinctive and irrational practices by which man has tried to give expression to his consciousness of that relation and to influence his earth-bound destiny. The story might be considered a modern appendix to The Golden Bough.
Margaret Cheney Dawson.
“Some Autumn Fiction.”
New York Herald Tribune,
24 September 1933, “Books” section,
pp. 17, 19.
This strange and mightily obsessed book is for those who are capable of yielding themselves completely to the huge embrace of earth-mysticism. Of all the brands of mysticism, religious or poetic, there is none so vast and awesome as that which arises from the earth and is a passion simply for the miracle of a body that yields, puts forth, grows and dies; which is unconcerned with good or evil, solace or punishment, error or reason. And of all the books written out of such passion, this is the purest expression of it that I have ever encountered.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- John SteinbeckThe Contemporary Reviews, pp. 21 - 28Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996